The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and a control method thereof. For example, the present invention relates to a semiconductor device including a plurality of processors and a control method thereof.
There is an increasing tendency to provide a plurality of processors in one semiconductor device such as a microcomputer. As a related technique, Published Japanese Translations of PCT International Publication for patent applications, No. 2013-521556 and No. 2013-521557 disclose a data processing device including two processing circuits. In Published Japanese Translations of PCT International Publication for patent applications, No. 2013-521556 and No. 2013-521557, one of the processing circuits operates with higher performance than that of the other processing circuit. On the other hand, the energy efficiency of the processing circuit having the higher performance is lower than that of the other processing circuit having the lower performance. Further, In Published Japanese Translations of PCT International Publication for patent applications, No. 2013-521556 and No. 2013-521557, only one of the two processing circuits processes a work load. Then, when a transfer stimulus (or a migration stimulus) occurs during the execution of the work load by one of the processing circuits, the work load is transferred from the one processing circuit to the other processing circuit in order to improve the work efficiency or the power consumption efficiency. Further, a similar technique is also disclosed in Peter Greenhalgh, ARM, “Big.LITTLE Processing with ARM Cortex™-A15 & Cortex-A7”, September 2011.